Thredbo Mountain Academy - Pathway Excellence Award Winner for 2024

Thredbo Mountain Academy has been awarded the Pathway Excellence Award in the 2024 Snow Australia Community Sport Awards. 

This award recognises a pathway club or program that has delivered a program, project or campaign, or implemented a plan which has provided significant benefit to their club or program. 

In 2024, Thredbo Mountain Academy made significant investments in coach development and retention, to complement on-snow and off-snow infrastructure upgrades. 

Snowsports Assistant Manager James Crompton shared that receiving the Pathway Excellence Award was thanks to a collective effort by everyone involved at the club. 

“It means a great deal to Thredbo to be recognised and I know our athletes and families will be delighted too,” Crompton said. 

“The success of the club is a collective effort with an emphasis on hard work and fun at every level. 

“It feels great for the club’s progress to be recognised and it’s fuel to keep doing more.”

The time and dedication put into strengthening the club in areas of coach development and retention has helped the club see success in multiple areas.

“The focus on coach development and retention has been a muli-year project, with many facets that form part of our Coach Development Pathway,” he said. 

“The biggest successes from these investments are in seeing higher-skilled, happy staff who feel invested, a closer-knit coaching team, stronger relationships between athletes and coaches and a significant increase in participation and program growth.”

James also shared that the desire to evolve and improve is what inspired Thredbo Mountain Academy to focus on the area of coach development and retention. 

“Evolving, improving and building strong teams to achieve more together is woven into the fabric of our values at Thredbo,” Crompton said.

“On a more personal level, Snowsports Manager AJ Jones and I have a strong passion for and deep history in developing people, specifically in snowsports.

“We want our team to love what they do, get better at doing it and share that energy with their athletes and community.

“There’s a genuine care for the wellbeing and success of our people throughout the resort and the club.”

Thredbo Mountain Academy also partners with Turn & Burn, winners of this award in 2023, on their Park & Pipe and Snowboard Cross programs. 

“The partnership has been pivotal in bringing and keeping excellent coaching with specific skillsets into the program,” he said. 

“It provided not only year-round training opportunities for our Mountain Academy athletes with Turn & Burn in the off-season, but also year-round coaching opportunities. 

“It has allowed us to significantly elevate the standards and quality of the program by constructing identical jumps throughout the season that mimic the NSTC features so transferring skills onto snow is seamless and instant in some cases. 

“Having two halfpipes built this past season and halfpipe specialists with past Olympic experience coaching Mountain Academy athletes was another huge step forward for the Turn & Burn x Thredbo Mountain Academy partnership.”

After witnessing the success that the focus on coach development brought the club, the foundations are already being laid for further developments in 2025.

“We will continue to create annual opportunities for coaches to grow and learn with internal training and sponsored courses,” he said. 

“We are also working closely with Snow Australia to support further national coach development within the disciplines. 

“Additionally, with Freeride World Tour Qualifiers taking place in Australia, we’re looking into how we can further support athletes and develop coaches in the Freeride competition space within our Mountain Academy programming.” 

Ultimately, James Crompton and all those involved at Thredbo Mountain Academy are proud of what their athletes achieved in 2024 and are excited to see what the future brings. 

“We are just really proud of all our athletes and coaches that have worked incredibly hard all season long and achieved some great results across the disciplines,” he said. 

“They have all come a long way in a short amount of time considering the programs did not exist in the 2020 season. 

“We are all excited to see what more we can do together in the future.”

Snow Australia would like to congratulate Thredbo Mountain Academy on receiving the Pathway Excellence Award in the 2024 Snow Australia Community Sport Awards, wishing them all the best in the future. 

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